The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity (e.g., greater bandwidth). In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology. Note, nothing described or referenced in this document is admitted as prior art to this application unless explicitly so stated.
Many current layer 2 (L2) networks, including those based on 802.1aq and TRILL, use a broadcast edge/routed cloud paradigm to replace spanning tree with a link state, shortest path mechanism for forwarding layer 2 traffic between attached devices or subnetworks. Among multiple L2 edge devices attached to a broadcast link, a single L2 forwarding device is selected to forward traffic originated on the broadcast link, and the others are configured to ignore such traffic. This selected device is referred to as the “designated forwarding device.” In TRILL, these forwarding devices are referred to as Rbridges (routing bridges), and the designated forwarding device is referred to as the “elected Rbridge.”